The Value of Third Party Website Monitoring Options

While some websites avoid the use of third party content, the majority of dynamic and user-intensive website enterprises utilizes some form of third party content. While the exact type of content can greatly vary, the need for stability and performance is universal. Because third party content can be difficult to stabilize as it relies on an outside source for some of its operation and performance metrics, a website monitoring solution can provide the necessary oversight and monitoring to ensure all third party content performs in a stable manner.

Third Party Content – Defined

Third party content can be found in almost all business and personal websites. Such activity with a third party element can include social network applications, such as a comment box, or advertising from a third party ad server. Typically, the use of third party content is designed to increase the level of interaction between users and the website. While these options enhance user engagement, they also cause a unique set of challenges for website administrator’s.

While your entire platform may be highly functional and stable, if a third party element is under-performing, the entire performance of a page or website can be negatively affected. However, this is where it’s helpful to have a solution for monitoring a website. Through the use of a monitoring solution, third party content can be monitored separately from your website. This ensures that any components that are under-performing are isolated for review. It’s only with this isolation that an administrator can determine the root cause of its errors or lack of performance. Because the use of third party content can be quite heavy, it’s imperative that you continually monitor the effectiveness and stability of these elements.

Establishing an Effective Monitoring Solution

Although there are many different techniques and methods used to monitor third party content, the most effective way to accomplish this goal is through a process known as page virtualization.

Page virtualization is the process of isolating specific third party elements, filtering these elements away from its hosted page, and establishing a “virtual” page to monitor the functionality and performance of each specific third party component. For example, a page within your website utilizes three primary third party components: CDN Host, Advertising Host and a Social Media Comment Box.

Upon activation, the monitoring solution extracts each of these three third party elements and establishing an individual “page” for each component. Once isolated, the monitoring solution is capable of delving into the inner-workings of the element. After a series of pre-set or customized tests, reports regarding content availability and performance are delivered. This is perhaps the fastest, and most effective, way of keeping a close eye on the performance of third party content and correlating its performance to the overall stability of a website.